The 2009 Readers' Choice Awards for Web Design are an award given by the readers of the About.com Web Design / HTML website. All sites were nominated by About.com readers and the final winners were decided by popular vote.
The goal of these awards is to promote good looking Web design for all types of websites and Web pages.
How the Sites Were Chosen
About.com readers were asked to nominate their favorite sites in 9 categories. They were only allowed to nominate the same site in two categories. Nominations were open for one month.
After the nominations were closed, the results were tallied. In each category, the 10 sites with the most nominations were chosen. If there were not 10 sites with more than one nomination, the remaining sites were chosen by the Web Design Guide.
How the Winners Were Chosen
All 10 nominees in each of the 9 categories were announced in the Web Design blog at the beginning of May. They were encouraged to publicise the award and solicit votes by their readers.
The site in each category that had the most votes as of midnight EST on Friday May 22, 2009, was declared the winner. Winners were announced on Monday, May 25th.
Concerns About Cheating
No online poll that doesn't require a login is completely fool-proof. But the About.com polls are written to deny robots or other automated processes from multiple votes.
When I reviewed the process, I found that in every category, the winners had heavily promoted the award and asked their readers to vote for them, in some cases several times during the voting period.
Concerns About the Quality of the Sites
These sites were chosen by the About.com readers as best representatives of the various categories. If you disagree, then next year you should nominate your favorite sites and get your friends and family to do the same.
